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Essential Species Quiz

Here is a short multiple-choice quiz to test your knowledge of our fellow animals.

Instructions: Choose the species that best fit the descriptions below.

Note: Although some may share a few of the characteristics, they must meet all the criteria listed in order to qualify as a correct answer.

1. Which two species fit the following description?

Highly social

Live in established communities

Master planners and builders of complex, interconnected dwellings

Have a language

Can readily learn and invent words

Greet one another by kissing

A. Humans

B. Prairie Dogs

C. Dolphins

D. Penguins

Answer: A. and B

2. Which two species fit the following description?

Practice communal care of the youngsters on their block

Beneficial to others who share their turf

Essential to the health of their environment

Without them an ecosystem unravels

Have been reduced to a tiny portion of their original population

Vegetarian

A. Humans

B. Prairie Dogs

C. Bison

D. Hyenas

Answer: B. and C.

3. Which two species fit the following description?

Out of control pest

Multiplying at a phenomenal pace

Physically crowding all other life forms off the face of the earth

Characterized by a swellheaded sense of superiority

Convinced they are of far greater significance than any other being

Nonessential in nature’s scheme

A. Humans

B. Prairie Dogs

C. Cockroaches

D. Sewer Rats

Answer: Sorry, trick question; the only species fitting the criteria is A.

If this seems a harsh assessment of the human race or a tad bit misanthropic, remember, we’re talking about the species that single-handedly and with malice aforethought blasted, burned and poisoned the passenger pigeon (at one time the most numerous bird on the entire planet) to extinction and has nearly wiped out the blue whale (by far the largest animal the world has ever known). Add to those crowning achievements the near-total riddance of the world’s prairie dogs, thereby putting the squeeze on practically all their grassland comrades, and you can start to see where this sort of disrelish might be coming from.

When the dust settles on man’s reign of terror, he will be best remembered as an egomaniacal mutant carnivorous ape who squandered nature’s gifts and goose-stepped on towards mass extinction, in spite of warnings from historians and scientists and pleas from the caring few…

Misanthropic rants are music to my ears. That last paragraph is golden…I may steal it but will give you credit :-) …And I absolutely LOVE prairie dogs….loving, adorable little soil aerators and fertilizer distributors and essential to nature. So far opposite of subhumans.

Hey, I wrote a children’s story in the mid-90s about prairie dogs, so studied them in great detail and fell in love with them. I may post it online someday. Goddamn the cattle industry for idiotically striving to wipe out those beautiful animals.

Great, I’d like to see it when you post it. And you’re right about the idiots trying to wipe them out. States like Wyoming “manage” (read: no limit and no closed season) them for “recreational shooting opportunities”!

TERRIFIC POST. Now i REALLY want to get your book and review it on my blog =) I have another review obligation deadline approaching, but after that I’m gonna tackle yours! I love the misanthropy. I got vasectomized at 25 (two years ago) and it was one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself. I actually have a great vasectomy poem I wrote in prison posted on my blog, and here’s a little something else to whet the appetite:

Get a Vasectomy–One Little Prick Now is Better Than Having a Bunch of Little Pricks Later!

Thanks again for checking out my Pictorial Highlight on the Anza-Borrego Desert in California!! I’m not sure if you saw Part 2, but I saved some of the best pictures for last:

Some definitely take it way too far. There needs to be a balance, and strict consequences for those who upset that balance. That includes not only unethical hunters, but businesses, construction, etc. destroying forests and other habitats in which animals live. It is sad to me to see all the animals that are endangered or extinct.